Sacred Space: The Way of the Sacred Feminine

I am intrigued with living and conceptualizing the emerging paradigm of the Sacred Feminine. May you experience this blog as a Circle where you can breathe in to who you are. May you find new dimensions to yourself.

How to Stay Out of Drama

Our sacred space gets cluttered when we go into drama. What actually happens in the ind then? How do you stay out of it? I recently had the chance to practice during a blow-up of a good friend. It was a painful moment, and I knew I didn't want to get triggered into old behaviors. This is how I worked with my new understanding of the working of mind, and how it is helping me to NOT get pulled into drama.

So here is what I witness in me: the moment she says: ‘I had expected you to say sorry, but as you are not doing that I see no other road than to break up’, it hurts. A lot is happening in me. It all happens in a flash, but using the Buddhist understanding of the layers of the ego, also called the skandha’s, helps me to tease it apart and not get sucked in.

The first skandha is called the Birth of Ignorance. In this situation, what I witness is: I sense distancing. My ego makes out of that that she is distancing herself from me. That is a perception, and thereby I separate myself off from the living situations she and I are both part of.

It is called the Birth of Ignorance because once you go with this, the rest follows suit.

The second skandha is that I throw my perception of this distancing into the category ‘threatening’, and it immediately raises fear of losing the friendship. I don’t relate anymore to this unique moment and person, I start reacting to ‘threat of losing relationship’.

Then the third skandha kicks in, which has various contradictory elements: I really love her, so I want to ‘save the relationship’, giving in my ego rise to lying low, pulling and tugging. At the same time, I am indignant at being ‘treated’ like this, which in my ego gives rise to closing down. If I let this all happen, my resulting behavior would be pretty awful... As I write it down things start shifting, but let's stay with this enquiry a moment longer.

Like a layered cake, the fourth skandha comes on top of that: my ego rationalizes: ‘because my friend is threatening me, I have no choice but to lie low and pull and tug, and it is natural that my heart wouldn’t be open anymore’.

Then comes the fifth which is like the sugaring which covers all, hides what is within and keeps it together: the stream of consciousness. The flow of my thoughts and feelings starts repeating over and over these same five layers: ‘she threatens to end the relationship, that scares me, I got to do something about that, better say sorry , say even more sorry, oh how can I prevent her breaking up, that would be terrible, but really this is too much, I don’t like being threatened, who does she think she is, but what if it really ends,…’ , and on and on, gluing the layers ever tighter together.

Teasing it apart, I see so many of my reactions are actually not towards my friend or the situation, but towards the grid that I lay over the situation. Exactly that is the Birth of Ignorance! And with it comes all confusion, misunderstandings, blow-ups, drama, ....

Seeing through it, suddenly there is so much space and heart! I see how it all started with the deeper current that is moving through our friendship, where there is more distance. I realize I never allowed my sorrow over that, and never enquired into why that happened. I realize she too must have sensed it, and I start wondering how that has been for her, and what her ego has been making out of it. I sense now I have been missing her, and realizing how seldom I reached out to her in the past year. I feel myself entering a very different place.

Perceiving is an art. It asks that you are both capable of being with the whole range of your feelings, and of analyzing what is happening in your mind.

Learning more about this art opens the heart, creates space and connects. For many years, I invested in finding and celebrating that state of open surrender and connection, and I know I am good at it. But it was hard for me to tap into it in my daily life, and to stay with it when challenging things like now with my friend happened. I am so happy that in the course of the last few years this has changed! I know many of us are dealing with exactly that same challenge: we know that state of opennness and heart, but we lose it too often, at work and in daily life... I feel eager and ready to share now an integrated approach, having in it both the keys to celebrate your unique magic and to keep that openness when triggered.

I offer Sacred Space Online Events and a Priestess Training in Avalon, Egypt, Crete and Netherlands. This is just the beginning of my bio, and I know it’s already so much. I published a book in Netherlands: Living In Bliss, The Path of Initiation in Ancient Goddess Cultures (in Dutch). What intrigues me now is leaving behind old structures and being ever more true to the moment. I live next to the sea with my dog and cat, and love travel and dancing. Read more about me on www.KlaraAdalena.com